Tom Cruise’s role in ‘The Mummy’ was intended to be "different".
The 54-year-old actor is known for playing the hero that "saves the day" in movies such as the ‘Mission: Impossible’ franchise and ‘Jack Reacher’, and director Alex Kurtzman has said the idea of taking control away from Tom’s character Nick Morton in the recently released reboot of the monster movie franchise was "interesting" to him.
He told Business Insider: "We have over 30 years of knowing Tom Cruise is going to save the day, in order to make the movie unpredictable I loved the idea that suddenly his control over the situation would be taken away from him … That got me excited, it felt like it served two purposes in that it honoured a key Mummy power but it also made a Tom Cruise movie feel different and interesting."
And whilst Nick is still billed as the protagonist of the movie, Tom recently said there are a lot of "grey areas" in his character which present him as an anti-hero.
He said: "He’s kind of naughty, Nick, a little bit. He’s somebody who’s a thief, an interesting character. We follow him as he takes us through this new world of gods and monsters in the new Dark Universe world and with this Dark Universe, you have these grey area characters. [Nick] is questionable, but he’s very charming and funny."
Tom isn’t the only actor who portrays a different kind of role in the movie either, as Annabelle Wallis recently gushed that her character Jenny Halsey shows "the truth about women" and isn’t the stereotypical "damsel in distress" character.
She said: "I loved that she’s feisty and she’s reflective of the women that I know in my life and that women that we have in Hollywood and in all walks of life. She’s real and she’s the truth about women. I wanted to make someone that was an homage to the classic heroine, but also a modern one that could be brought forward into the future. And she’s rough and tumble and just is who she is."
Tom Cruise’s ‘different’ Mummy character
